You and your students are now able to use information communication technologies (ICTs) along with multimedia resources found on the web to communicate, collaborate, create, and publish immediately in the classroom as well as for a global audience.

As an educator, you have an ever-increasing ability and responsibility to use information, materials, and multimedia found on the Internet for use in both the presentation of content and the support of student learning.

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As such, you must be aware of the concepts and issues related to “Fair Use” and “Copyright” so that you can appropriately advocate, model, and teach the safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information, resources, and technologies to prepare your students to be effective global citizens.

CopyRight Basics Video

Fair Use
Unfortunately, many teachers interpret fair use as the right to use copyrighted materials as long as their use is limited to educational purposes within the classroom. This is not an appropriate stance and does not model legal and ethical behavior as a professional or global citizen. Take this opportunity to be familiar with what fair use really means and its application in the classroom.

The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use
This series of articles pertaining to copyright law and fair use from Educational World provides a wealth of information for any practicing teacher.

Copyright for Educators
This LearnNC article explains copyright and U.S. copyright law primarily with respect to education.


Creative Commons

The Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides licenses and other legal tools that make easier the process of sharing and building upon the work of others that honors established copyright laws.

Creative Commons Use and Application in Education


The Creative Commons provides a legal path to access instructional resources (media, images, video, etc.) that are available for use or reproduction in your classroom and student projects. Creative commons licenses help you and your students realize the full potential of digitally enhanced education.


Watch Creative Common’s classic animated video covers the basics of why Creative Commons was formed, what they do, and how they do it: Creative Common Licenses



You and your students should understand the various levels of Creative Commons licenses. Creative Common licenses do not affect any rights of users that are covered under normal copyright limitations and exceptions, such as fair use. However, if you are your students want to use or reproduce music, video and/or images those goes beyond fair use policy, then knowing the CC becomes imperative. These are NOT difficult to use - for example, for multimedia covered by an “attribution license”, simply meaning that you or your student must give credit to the creator. For an image, for example, this can be easily accomplished by using the image’s URL on or near the image or in a citation list associated with the presentation or project.

Get to Know Flickr Creative Commons

Please review the following web sites to get a stronger sense of a) what media resources are available that can be filtered by CC license and b) how you can access and use CC instructional resources by content area. Flickr Creative Commons

Many images are available under a Creative Commons license, so you and your students could search for images under each type of license. This a great way to avoid fair use issues in your teaching and in students’ products.
Participating Institutions



More Lesson Plans: CLICK HERE


Other Creative Commons Resources!

"Read Write Think": Cite Those Sources Lesson Plan
Creative Commons Search
More about Creative Commons
Google Advanced Image Search

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